The Red Legend, The Core of Russian Armor

Soviet mechanized forces flooding into the heartland of Western Europe through the Fulda Gap would be the last thing the NATO soldiers would like to see during the Cold War. In the 1980s, the core of the Soviet attack was a legendary tank, the T-72. In 1981, when the Soviet Union knew that new main battle tanks like M1 and Leopard 2 would enter military service with NATO forces, they immediately decided to upgrade the T-72 main battle tank maintain the deterrence against the opponent. This upgrade project was called “Object 184”. The “Object 184” was a comprehensive upgrade of protection, maneuverability and firepower. What’s worth mentioning was the installation of a new fire control system 9K120, so as to fire the 9M119 Svir guided anti-tank missile (NATO reporting name AT- 11 Sniper). The new V-84-1 engine and the upgraded suspension system offered “Object 184” better maneuverability than all the previous T-72 tanks. In 1984, this latest T-72 variant was named T-72B. As per the Russian tradition, some of those upgraded tanks had simpler equipment and they were not capable of firing gun-launched missiles. Those tanks were called T-72B1. The T-72B1 main battle tanks were the core of the Soviet and Russian armored forces at the end of the last century.